Olympic Road Cycling

Not a big follower of cycling.

But can somebody explain briefly why the mens GBR team didn't break from the peleton to catch the leaders.

They had 5 of them, so why couldn't they slip stream eachother to spread the work load?
 
norm said:
They had 5 of them, so why couldn't they slip stream eachother to spread the work load?
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They tried. 4 of them split the work, and Cavendish sat behind them (to keep him fresh for a sprint).
But the breakaway had 30+ riders who were splitting the work load up front, so 4 vs 30 was never going to work in our favour.
 
norm said:
Not a big follower of cycling.

But can somebody explain briefly why the mens GBR team didn't break from the peleton to catch the leaders.

They had 5 of them, so why couldn't they slip stream eachother to spread the work load?
Click to expand...

As Touch said above plus the reason the breakaway got away in the first place was because the whole GB team were working for Cav to get him the win and he is a slow climber so GB had no choice but to let the breakaway get away and try and catch them on the flat, but the fact that 30 riders got away and almost every country represented in the breakaway meant that GB got almost no help from the peloton in chasing down the 30 and there is no way 4 men are going to be able to chase down 30 that are working together.
 
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I work for a German company so all our IT goes through a German proxy meaning the usual BBC iPlayer doesn't work.

Does anyone know if the Olympics is worldwide streaming on BBC iPlayer or another site I can watch the cycling time trials this afternoon?
 
Russinating said:
I thought the breakaways gap was reduced from 5mins down to ~2 minutes whilst on Box Hill? So they certainly didn't climb that slow (slower than their usual though yes).
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Most of the riders who were in the winning break went on the last climb of box hill.
There was a break before they got to the climb, which they were bringing back but i dont know if it was caught by the peleton before the next break went or not.
 
explicit4u said:
n00b question, why are the back-wheels different to the road-race ones?
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The TT is all about aerodynamics (hence the weird helmets, etc). So most will be using a full disc wheel on the rear. They normal wheels they were using in the road race are lighter so are better for climbing and quick accelerations. Also, in the road race, a lot of the time will be spent riding behind somebody else in their slipstream, so aerodynamics are not so crucial.
Weight is not very important for the TT. It's ridden at a pretty much constant speed so there's very little accelerations. Aerodynamics are much more important for TT.
 
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